


Lowest Tides

by Sheliak



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22656280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheliak/pseuds/Sheliak
Summary: Sokka knows Yue's death was the only way to repair the world's balance.He tries to save her anyway.
Relationships: Katara & Sokka (Avatar), Sokka/Yue (Avatar), slight Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 122
Collections: Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2019





	Lowest Tides

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minium/gifts).



The moon is different than it was, though few people notice. 

Perhaps it could return to the way it was. Perhaps.

* * *

A rope of dried seagrass, dozens of hollow pods dangling from it, desiccated husks that once kept this stuff on the surface to snare Water Tribe ships. 

_Break one to return to the time of your regrets._

That’s the superstition. It’s never worked for him before, but he's never had a regret like this, and these washed ashore on the night _she_ died, the night of the ocean's own regrets. Maybe it’ll be different.

He should hesitate. He does. But in the end, he crushes one pod between two fingers, and the world breaks with it.

* * *

He slides back into his own mind, then and now sliding past each other and into each other, like—like he's the pigment he's stirring into war paint. The Sokka of before-either _before_ —doesn't exist anymore. Not exactly. And the new Sokka, the Sokka who is both, stands frozen for a long moment, trying to get his balance.

But there is the rope of pods, and he ties it around his waist as a belt. Just in case.

* * *

He tries. He does everything better, puts years of new skills to good use.

But she dies, again. And again, he crushes a pod between his fingers, and finds himself merging back again.

And when he ties the rope around his waist again, he sees that two of the pods are still broken.

* * *

So many memories, now: _second third hundredth last_ all merging into the first, again and again, tangled and blurred. He gets confused, sometimes: has he already warned them that the armor has changed? Has he even spoken to her, yet? 

And again and again, she dies and she rises, and he feels her light on his face.

* * *

Back: break another of those fragile pods. It seemed like so many, to begin with. How many will he need?

* * *

Of course his sister can tell something’s wrong with him. But not what.

She's busy enough with her own studies. But a few times, he alarms her enough that she tries to help. She thinks maybe he’s depressed by Yue’s engagement; she argues with the other girl once, mentions their grandmother's example, and another time she mentions another girl to him, one who taught him to fight as she does. 

And that’s almost enough to make him turn back. 

But in the end, he doesn’t.

* * *

“Take me instead.” 

But it doesn’t quite work that way, does it?

* * *

Again and again and again. 

He tries everything. He fights, he strategizes, he bargains with an enemy (and the Dragon of the West is an enemy still), he uses every scrap of cleverness he has. It isn’t enough. 

He begs her to run with him; she refuses, every time. 

(Once, she dies before the moon does, and there is nothing to assuage the ocean’s grief, nothing to right the balance. 

After that, he stops trying to argue with her.)

He dies fighting to defend the sacred pool, and another pod is crushed under him as he falls bleeding to the ground. 

_Again._

* * *

One pod left. Surely there’s no fixing this. (He should let things play out as they did the first time, mourn her, live his life, seek out that other girl.) But he has to try, the one time he has left. 

This time the admiral’s knife comes for two and not one. And now, with no more chances ahead of him, Sokka sees only one way forward.

“Take me too.”

He does not share Yue’s connection to the moon. But there is something of the ocean in all waterbenders, and in all their children. Something of its life.

* * *

The moon is different, now. So is the ocean. 

A waterbender will tell you, now, that the salt water has a mind of its own. That it is clever, and laughs at jokes. That it loves, and has a heart that broke once, and left another heart broken behind it. The northerners mutter and shake their heads, but the southerners say: our brother will always be with us. 

Little enough comfort for a girl who has lost her brother to something stranger than death. But when she bends, she feels his presence, can almost hear his voice. And when she fights, he fights alongside her. 

The moon still shines down on the water, and the water still reaches out for the moon. Two fish still circle each other in a hidden pool—and if they’re not exactly the same two fish, very few care about the difference.

But on moonless nights, when a girl and then a woman dances with her war fan by the water, the tide dances with her.


End file.
